current

Growing Smaller: Can we limit population growth without
causing climate change?

Summary

An examination of a six step
thesis:

Historically,
even if economic growth and falling population may be correlated, was the
first a precondition for the second?

2.Even
if it was, was rising energy a pre-condition for economic growth?

3.If
so, is the present any different from the past?

4.Even
if it is not, is clean energy available to satisfy rising energy demand on the
needed timetable so that we can contain population at or below 9 billion?

5.If
not, can we hope to avoid ongoing carbon output and the associated global
warming without implementing draconian social policies?

6.If
not, then, have we any hope of cleaning up the mess we will have created?

Description

When it comes
to climate change, are we doomed? Go ahead and get rid of one of your cars,
change your light bulbs and heat your house less. It may make you feel good but
it will make almost no difference. The reason why is that those of us who have
the luxury to cut back are only 15% of the world’s population. However much we
cut back is not going to offset the rest of the world’s rising energy
consumption now and in the future. That is the problem. Well, what if we
say no more energy for anyone unless it is green?

This book
considers a counter-argument to this idea that runs as follows: without rising
energy consumption now, there can be no economic growth now, and with no
economic growth now, world population is going to explode – to 15 billion people
by the end of the century. Wealth and smaller family size go hand in hand. So
let there be green energy now! But the problem with that is that there simply
is no way to grow green energy at a fast enough rate to keep up with demand.
The price of stabilizing population at 9 billion people means we are bound to
break safe levels of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere if we have not done so
already. Nor do we avoid the problem by postponing economic growth. That simply
creates a world of 15 or more billion, and their energy demand will be even
harder to satisfy with green energy. The logic of this argument leads to an
inevitable conclusion: to avoid doom we have to recognize that we need to
develop technology to remove greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere in the
future.

I lead the
reader through an evaluation of this argument and then examine the prospects
for the technology of carbon capture from the air. Although there is
consensus that current technology does not allow this to be done effectively at
the scale required, I ask what it is going to take to address the
problem. This challenge calls for a breed of speculative scientific
thinking that rarely takes place in public. I pursue it by engaging in
conversation with well-known scientists who are “big thinkers”.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Here is a nightmare scenario - what if
population size is inversely related to economic well-being? And, what if without
rising energy consumption now there can be no economic growth now? Then
world population is going to explode. At current rates of reproduction, more
than 15 billion people by the end of the century according to UN projections! You
may think green energy can solve the problem of energy demand. But what if
there is no way to supply green energy on the timetable needed to fuel economic
growth. Then, absent draconian social policies, the price of stabilizing
population at (only!) 9 billion people means we are bound to break safe levels
of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere if we have not done so already. Nor do
we avoid the problem by postponing economic growth. That simply creates a world
of 15 or more billion, and their energy demand will be even harder to satisfy
with green energy. If this argument can withstand scrutiny, it leads to an
inevitable conclusion: to avoid doom we have to recognize that we need to
develop technology to remove greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere in the
future. That turns out to be a daunting task, at least based on our exploratory
efforts to date. So we should hope this argument is flawed in some way. But is
it? And if so, where? I am a philosopher not a scientist. All I bring to the
table is skepticism. For the rest I must rely on the expertise of others. So my
quest to answer these questions is not one I can hope to succeed at on my own.
Instead the challenge is to find those who can help shed light on them. What
follows is an account of my attempt to meet that challenge.

Chapter One: What Does History Tells Us? In this
chapter I examine the claims that historically, contra Malthus, population
growth has been inversely related to economic wealth, above a certain range and
that, historically, economic growth has been related energy growth. But even if
these relations hold historically, I go on to ask if there a causal connection.
Was economic growth a precondition for falling family size? And was energy
growth a precondition for economic growth? Location: England.

Chapter Two: Does the Present Mirror History? Here I
pose the question of whether both of these relations still hold today
especially in the light of the perceived importance of women’s control of
reproduction. Canvassing recent discussions of climate change, I show how this
question has been systematically ignored by those advocating “limits” on growth. In contrast, I use United Nations projections
to show that the hope to control the population at 9 billion in this century
sets a timetable for economic growth and with it energy growth. Locations:
Mexico, Africa.

Chapter Three: Can Clean Energy Satisfy Demand? In this
chapter I examine whether or not the growth of clean energy can be expected to
conform to this timetable. Canvassing recent discussions of clean energy, I
show how the timetable for its supply has been systematically ignored by those arguing for a fossil fuel free
economy. But absent an adequate supply of clean energy, I argue that atmospheric
concentrations of CO2 can be expected to rise well above prescribed safe levels
if population is to be contained at 9 billion. Location: China.

Chapter Four: Hard Choices and the Carbon Calculus. In
this chapter I argue that the only way
to reduce those levels will be via air capture of that CO2 unless we accept universal
restrictions on family size or
curtail efforts to prevent pandemics which I argue is unlikely on
political grounds if not moral grounds. Locations: China, Africa.

Chapter Five: Can We Put Things Right (with current
technology)? In this chapter I review three current prototypes for small scale (artificial
and biological based) air capture but
why most scientists think they can’t be implemented at the needed scale. I then
examine whether the efficiency of current (sorbent and algae) technology can be
improved to work at the needed scale. Locations: California, New York, Arizona.

Chapter Six: Dreaming of a Solution. Finally, I
examine the potential for new approaches to the problem of carbon capture from
the air at the needed scale. Content of this chapter will not be will not be
available until interviews take place. But in general terms they can be
expected to fall into two groups: physical processes that not only bind carbon
dioxide but use it to generate new iterations of the process, and biological
process that are engineered de novo.

Appendix: A non-technical account of some key
calculations used in the argument.

Prospective Interviewees
listed by chapter:

Gregory Clark, Professor of
Economics, UCDavis (1).

Graham Zabel, MSc Demography/Energy
Economics, London School of Economics (1).

William Murdoch, Charles A.
Storke II Professor of Population Ecology at the UCSanta Barbara (2).